Makedonas

We finished with 3 gold and 1 silver GOLD for Bourmpou/Fragkou in W2- which was obviously expected as they dominated the World U23 Championships this year with a world record. GOLD for Gkaidatzis in LM1X. He hadn't competed with the national team since 2019, so it was nice to see him come back and win another medal. Hopefully he can reunite with his old partner Papakonstantinou and try to qualify for Paris together in LM2X (Papakonstantinou won gold this year at the European Championships in LM1X and gold at last year's World U23 Championships in LM1X). GOLD for Kontou/Natsioula in W2X. They are really impressive, Kontou is 16yo and Natsioula is 17yo, so for them to both win a U23 gold medal in such a challenging boat class is really special. Natsioula has won 4 gold medals in her last 4 regattas, all in W2X (2022 European U23, 2022 World U19, 2022 European U19, 2021 European U19). And for Kontou this is her first medal as she did not compete at the U19 level this year, and instead was focusing on U23 Worlds (in W1X) and the World Cup. I think it will be the first of many gold medals for her... SILVER for Anastasiadou in LW1X. Really shocking and disappointing. Did not expect this at all, she has been winning gold at the European U23s since she was 18, and this year won gold at the World U23s with a world record and silver in W1X as a lightweight (!!!) at the European Championships. Not sure what happened but at least she won another medal. 4th places for Angou/Varelopoulou (LW2X) and the Boukouvalas brothers (M2-). Both missed the podium by less than one second. As I've said, we are really Canada 2.0 here...also not sure why we sent Angou who is only 17 yo and has never won a medal at anything before, I think we had better options for Varelopoulou to have a partner to reach the podium. 5th out of 5 boats for our W2-. They are all U19s so it's not a big deal, and two of them (Argyraki and Asvesta) won gold in W2- this year at both the World and European U19s. The Papaioannou sisters were clearly too inexperienced to do better at this level. 6th for our M2X. Not much to say. We had Iasonas Exarchou last year win silver in this event as a U19, not sure why he wasn't selected again this year. 11th for Papazoglou in M1X. He is only 17 yo so I didn't expect much, he won medals at both the World and European U19s this year and probably will do the same next year.

2022 European U23 Rowing Championships Gold: Christina Bourmpou and Evangelia Fragkou (women's pair) Petros Gkaidatzis (men's lightweight single sculls) Dimitra Kontou and Styliani Natsioula (women's double sculls) Silver: Evangelia Anastasiadou (women's lightweight single sculls)

Well we beat Croatia and Italy, both games were closer than they should have been but as long as we win I guess I shouldn't complain. Those are by far the two toughest opponents we will have to face in our group so now we really should win the group and then we will see. We have a history of doing well in the group stage and choking in knockout rounds so I won't get too excited, although it is really hard to see us not making the podium this year...

2022 US Open Men's singles: First round: (Q) Daniel Elahi Galan COL d. (4) Stefanos Tsitsipas GRE 6-0 6-1 3-6 7-5 Women's singles: First round: (3) Maria Sakkari GRE d. Tatjana Maria GER 6-4 3-6 6-0 Second round: Xiyu Wang CHN d. (3) Maria Sakkari GRE 3-6 7-5 7-5 Women's singles qualifying: First round: Mai Hontama JPN d. Despina Papamichail GRE 6-2 6-2 Men's doubles: First round: (WC) Eubanks/Shelton USA d. (A) Tsitsipas/Tsitsipas GRE 3-6 7-6(8) 6-2

Well in the end of the 11 players I predicted, 10 were correct. Mitoglou's doping suspension obviously prevents him from playing, but I did not expect Lountzis to make the team. Agravanis is very good and I can't believe I forgot to mention him in this post back in November. Personally I would have chosen Kalaitzakis over Lountzis but I am not the coach

Good win for us yesterday over Croatia although I didn't have the chance to watch it. We are still not at full strength with several players just coming back from injury (Papagiannis, Papapetrou, Sloukas) and hopefully playing their way into form throughout this tournament. I think if we beat Italy today, then it's almost impossible for us to not finish first place in the group. We have our two most difficult opponents first, I don't see us struggling against the other three teams in the group...

In other rowing news, the European U23 Championships are currently underway in Belgium

This tournament is very boring. 12 teams are too many. Wake me up when the semifinals start

This is clearly the worst Grand Slam for us ever. Women's singles qualifying 0 wins, 1 loss Women's singles main draw 1 win, 1 loss Men's singles main draw 0 wins, 1 loss Men's doubles main draw 0 wins, 1 loss Also our junior Michaela Laki will not be participating despite being ranked high enough to get into the draw. So yeah, this is very disappointing for us. I know some years we had 0 wins across all categories, but this time expectations were higher as we have two top 5 players...

Our team is really not good, we are missing several key players due to injury so I don't expect a medal unfortunately. Although the 5-5 score against Croatia actually isn't so bad. Kind of crazy that we have 1 Olympic medal and 3 World Championship medals, but have never won a European Championship medal in our history. Although really all three competitions are about the same level since Europeans dominate men's water polo.

^Now number 80 in the live rankings. I still don't understand how Sakkari lost to that fluke last year in the semifinals

29 yo Katerina Nikolaidou (rowing) She hasn't competed since 2019 due to injury so it's not surprising, although last year she was trying to get healthy in time for Tokyo, then after she was saying she was focusing on Paris but now she has "former rower" in her Instagram bio. She was a big hope for us, in 2010 won bronze in the single sculls at the World Junior Championships and after that won a silver at the 2012 World U23 Championships in the double sculls. Then she switched to lightweight category in 2013 where she had a fantastic year, gold at the European Championships and World U23 Championships and silver at the World Championships. She had a similar year in 2014 with the only difference being silver at the World U23s instead of gold. Then she switched back to the double sculls and won silver at the World Championships in 2015 with Sofia Asoumanaki. They were a very young team and finished 4th at the 2016 Olympics (we expected a medal from them there really) at ages 23 and 19. Nikolaidou never made it back to the Olympics ever since...

U16 World Championships: beat in both finals to win gold for boys and girls Our national teams won 6 medals in 2021 and so far 5 in 2022. None of them gold...

You were right, we did beat you. However, you beat us yesterday at the finals of both the U16 Men's and Women's World Championships. So congrats, you got two gold medals against our young teams and we got two silver.

Very true, although last year she was injured after US Open and did not play for a few months so she won't be defending points this year after the US Open at least.

They just know nothing about tennis and like to hate Maria because she dates the PM's son. They made similar comments when she lost to Pliskova in Toronto. Obviously they don't know she is a former number 1.

Yes we had a good week with athletics, rowing, swimming, gymnastics medals, also Tsitsipas in the men's final. Even our second ATP player Pervolarakis won a set against a top 50 opponent yesterday. Sadly our hyped U16 basketball team got 4th place after our best player got injured and missed most of the tournament. Our men's senior NT dominated the Acropolis Tournament (unfortunately for you the Poland game was the only one he actually played in). It's too bad Sakkari had to play Garcia in her first match, everyone in Greece was criticizing her for losing to such a "random opponent" although I knew Garcia was playing much better than her ranking. And still Sakkari hit 17 aces and was playing well in that match.

Wow, she beat Bronzetti 6-2 6-4 to win the title and moves up now from her current ranking of 239 to a new career-high of 143!

6th European gold for Petrounias

Tsitsipas just beat Medvedev in the semifinals of Cincinnati! This is his second win over a world number 1, as he also beat Djokovic in Shanghai 2019.

2022 European Athletics Championships: GOLD: Antigoni Drisbioti - Women's 35km walk Miltiadis Tentoglou - Men's long jump Antigoni Drisbioti - Women's 20km walk Elina Tzengko - Women's javelin throw SILVER: Ekaterini Stefanidi - Women's pole vault

Fun fact: We have won gold in the women's javelin three times. Anna Verouli won gold in 1982, then Manjani in 2002 and Tzengko in 2022 I have a feeling we won't have to wait 20 years for another women's javelin gold considering Tzengko's age and ability

Valentini Grammatikopoulou into the Vancouver final!

Of course being Canada 2.0, we got 4th place And Spain ended with silver, meanwhile we beat them by 28 in the group stage Lithuania won gold @Werloc